Students of language will be intrigued by the way some words have become known only by their initial letters, such as “k” and “n”. By students of language, I don’t mean the canon fodder churned out by journalism schools, those lackadaisical kids brandishing smartphones with a dictionary.com app, and who think that “always ennui” is a lifestyle choice that has something to do with wifi. I’m talking about people who actually watch language evolve, rather than just take notes on their iPads.
Why has the k-word become unsayable? Short answer: because the word has been used by a dominant interest group as a bludgeoning instrument of power to disenfranchise, destroy and conquer. So how come newspapers can still get away with calling a woman a “cougar”, as happened on many billboards and front pages recently? To quote The Star: “The woman who became known as The Cougar pleaded guilty to enticement to commit assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm to her young lover.”
The jokes write themselves, of course, especially because said young lover was also in a relationship with The Cougar’s young cub. And I’ve got nothing against jokes. But a very similar power relationship to that of the k-word is in operation here. “Cougar” is a word used to subjugate, taunt and disempower a large sector of society that is mired in an unequal relationship of power.
The definition of “cougar”, from the Urban Dictionary, is: “An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man. The cougar can be anyone from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie or milf.” So just pussy with new branding and more hair, basically.
Can newspaper subeditors not understand that this is an insult? And where we allow one insulting term to gain humorous currency and legitimacy, we open the door to others. I was enthralled to note that there is a subspecies of cougar, called the “urban cougar”. Here’s the definition from the Urban Dictionary, which we’ll assume is a good barometer of the word on the street. “An older African American woman in hot pursuit of younger males. Etymology: Urban = Euphemism for black people used by whites who are no longer confident in saying either ‘black’ or ‘African American’.”
Not so funny now, huh? Now call me the f-word if you will, but I think the oppression of women should be as iniquitous as oppression based on race. Unfortunately, thanks to the marketing skills of Julius Malema, the c-word bandwagon is taken, so to avoid confusion we’ll just have to continue using “cougar”, even when we’re railing against its use. And we should rail.
Obviously, this attitude has a shelf-life: nobody wants to live in a world where you can’t tell newspaper e-words that they’re stupid f-wording i-words, but can’t we at least avoid the terms altogether?
Follow Chris Roper on Twitter @chrisroperza